January 10, 2009

Please forgive me if I start with a bit of self-criticism. We are careless with our history. If I am to judge by the content of the media, by the activity of our historians, by the silence of Government and parliament, hardly anyone is aware that the late, largely unlamented Federation would have celebrated its 50th birthday on either 3 January or 22 April. But whatever our recollections and/or experience of that episode, it should be obvious, not only to sentimental federationists, that the project, however ineptly executed, was, according to eminent as well as not so eminent commentators, the result of ‘40 years of popular agitation’, and it certainly represented our one effort to build a West Indian nation. It is therefore appropriate that commemoration, however belated, should begin.Permit me to tell a little story that probably explains why I volunteered to give this lecture. Way back in the summer of 1957, one organization in Jamaica, the Kingston and St. Andrew Ratepayers Association, belatedly realized that on the eve of the federal elections few Jamaicans knew anything about federation. They therefore turned to the department of history at Mona to help them in their Federation Enlightenment Campaign. Naturally, many of the lecturers volunteered their services, but one of those volunteers, Roy Augier, had to travel, and asked me, his student, to substitute for him. I did and, almost petrified, gave my first public lecture (in a panel discussion) on federal movements in the British Caribbean. The point of the story is this: (the good news) I am not repeating that lecture tonight, but (the bad news, perhaps) the conclusions are substantially the same, because nothing that I have read since then has seriously undermined those youthful conclusions... keep reading

WHEN ‘10’ MAY HAVE BEEN AN ODD NUMBER: SOME PERSPECTIVES ON THE WEST INDIES

This Lecture Series commemorates an anniversary; it is not inappropriate, therefore, that I begin with a reminiscence that is both personal and apposite. Fifty-eight years ago, in 1950 ( I was 22), I had to decide the subject of my LLM dissertation. I chose "Constitutional aspects of Federalism in the British West Indies". Why? It was two years after the Montego Bay Conference and Norman Manley was in London. He came and talked to the London University Students Union at the LSE about ‘Federation’. I was totally captivated by his passion and his eloquence and that began my federal journey - which has not ended. I knew that day what the subject of my dissertation had to be; and that decision has shaped my life.

Many years later in Jamaica when I was briefly at the bar and Norman Manley, now retired from politics, had his Chambers nearby in Duke Street I reminded him of that lunchtime address and told him how it had affected my life. He was pleased; he was still a West Indian regionalist and sad about the outturn of the referendum and the dreams it shattered - including mine. Years later still, I was moved by his grand-daughter’s tender reminiscence of her encounter with him at ‘Drumblair’ hours after the results of the referendum had come in. “ Did we win, Pade? “, the little girl asked. “No Pie; we didn't win; everybody lost “. And in this at least he was right; everybody did lose, including generations of West Indians not yet born, like many of you here tonight... keep reading

Notes

Sir Shridath Ramphal and Professor Woodville Marshall speak to the Federation, fifty years on, at the EBCCI, Barbados, late in 2008. Thank you to Cherri-Ann Beckles, Assistant Archivist at the W.I. Federal Archives Centre, Cave Hill Campus Archives, UWI, Barbados; for making their lectures available to this blog.

The lectures were a part of the W.I. Federal Archives Centre Mini-Lecture Series in celebration of 50 years since the Inauguration of The West Indies Federation (November 2008).

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*International Lens Film Series in conjunction with Ifeoma Nwankwo of the English Department, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA October 15 - 17

*3rd Annual Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, Port of Spain, Trinidad - Two Screenings at Movietowne, September 20, & at UWI, St. Augustine, September 22 2008

*The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom, September 17. Introduced by Andrea MacDonald of MAS-SAMple, Skype discussion to follow with Newcastle audience and me in Barbados, facilitated by Andrea.

* Annalee has been invited by Sydney Simmons to be his guest on Talk Yuh Talk, a radio programme on Q 100.7 on Thursday August 21st 9.00am - 10.30am. Tune in on your local radio or visit www.cbc.bb and tune in on line. The focus is On the Map as an intervention into the CSME and discussion about regional integration.

*Orlando's 1st Caribbean Film Festival 2008, Saturday, June 21, Two screenings at 1.18pm & 5.18pm followed by groupd discussion at the Valencia Community, 1800 S. Kirkman Rd., Tel (407) 299 5000. Organised by the Alliance of Guyanese Expatriates, the African American Culture Society, the Valencia Community College & the Guyanese American Culture Association of Central Florida

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Annalee Davis

I work as a visual artist and currently live in St. George, Barbados.
I create works in video, installation, drawing and painting and
sometimes I build objects.
My works explore ideas about home/land, longing and belonging and
expose tensions within a larger context of a post-colonial history
and more recent post (post) -independent spaces.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007St. George, Barbados

Creole Chant

(complete text)

I am the complex CreoleMy context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreedOf carnival, class and comess Cognizant of ColumbusAnd the CommonwealthThat created these confused coloniesCorrectly criticized for the callous treatmentOf the Amerindian And the reconstitution Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries laterMy coronary artery cracklesWhen I think of the creatures That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collideThere is more chaos than communitySome feel like foreignersAs though uncharacteristicOf these now ex-coloniesOur natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wearLike a crest on my chestMy credentials are that I am created equallyCredible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor countryI sing the canticlesAnd practice a yogaI chantI breatheI made my jappa and wrote a creed I owned a crucifixAnd acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion ofCinnamon, coffee and cuminCocoa, cotton and caneIt is with composure and compassion thatI conceive my compatriots as compatibleWhether Cuban or Guyanese,Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatoryThat is a consanguineous conscious communityConfidently confirming a conglomerateWho speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex CreoleConfronting this crossroads of centuriesI cannot condone the corruptionNor those who configure the conflict –I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way And commemorate the cobweb we have becomeI come to youNot as a comedianNor as a clownI come to you as a coalitionOf combustible matterA civilized collectiveSometimes caustic, but never counterfeitI am a cordless creator of cultureConveying my codesTo a community that isn’t convincedOf the credit of cultural producers